


Season of Promise

by FearNoEvil



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Canon - Anime Dub, Christmas, Cookies, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Married Couple, Post-Series, Reincarnation, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8237350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FearNoEvil/pseuds/FearNoEvil
Summary: When the doorbell rings on Christmas Eve, the boy waiting on the other side is the last person anyone in the Gardner-Mutou family ever expected to see again.





	

 “Yeah, Kaiba, I’m still there,” Yugi murmured, transferring the phone to his other ear as he picked up a tiny bottle of blue food coloring.  He squeezed two little drops into the bowl of white frosting and crossed the kitchen to get a wooden spoon as he listened to Kaiba.  Placing the spoon in the bowl, he passed it off to his daughter with a smile, who grinned with enthusiasm and began to stir rapidly.

“Well, that’s very generous, Kaiba, but it’s not about money; it’s about _integrity_.”  Another pause as Yugi watched little Amana spread the two drops of color throughout the whiteness, evening it out into a solid and very pale blue.  “More?” he whispered to her, placing a hand over the mouthpiece for a second.  When she nodded, he indulgently dripped two more drops of blue into the frosting bowl and ruffled her long brown hair affectionately.

“Look,” he replied with a sigh, “you know I support the Duel Academy, you know I think it’s great teaching kids like that and helping them develop into better Duelists, but I can’t be a part of it if you’re going to continue to disrespect my best friend! . . . _He_ would get it, OK!  _Joey_ would get it, he’d know exactly what you were insinuating!”

Amana held up the bowl again, now a slightly darker sky-blue from the extra drops while Yugi listened to Kaiba’s reply.  Yugi made a great show of scrutinizing it seriously.  He picked up the Dark Magician Girl card and held it up to compare the color of her dress to the frosting. Then he gave his daughter a thumbs-up, and she beamed in delight.

Suddenly another sound, a slightly canned-sounding up-tempo pop song, began to play.  Yugi recognized it as Téa’s ringtone and followed the sound of it out of the kitchen and into the living room.  “Kaiba,” he continued, as he scanned across the room, “just change the monkey’s name to something _other_ than Wheeler, and I’ll do as many speeches and exhibition matches as you want, OK?  It’s not that complicated. . . . It’s only complicated to _you_ because it’s a matter of pride.”

There was the phone, sitting innocently on the windowsill between the TV remote and a decorative Christmas angel, its little Kuriboh charm hanging off the side.  It wasn't quite the same phone that she'd had in high school, but the day Téa stopped liking cute things was the day she died.  The thing was nearly in danger of vibrating itself off the edge, but Yugi was too quick for it.  “Listen, Kaiba, I’ve got to go.  If you change the monkey’s name, call me again.”  Taking the phone, he began trekking down the hall toward his and Téa’s bedroom.  As he reached the door his face broke into a smile.  “No, you _didn’t_ ,” he told Kaiba merrily.  “Anyway, merry Christmas, Kaiba!  And send our love along to Mokuba, too!”  He then ended the call on the house phone and opened the door to the bedroom.

“Téa, sweetie?  Phone for you,” he said softly.  He glanced at the caller ID and smiled. “It’s Joey!”

Téa raised herself wearily from her after-work stupor.  She worked her exhausted face into a grin before flipping open the loud, vibrating pink menace and saying, cheerful as anything, “Joey, hey!”

Yugi watched her in mild concern. She’d been lying on the bed in silence since getting home today, after monosyllabically parrying all his questions about how her day was.  Six months pregnant with their second child, it was the first time in years that she wouldn’t be performing in her troupe’s annual holiday performance of _The Nutcracker_ – so instead she was assistant directing, and the younger, often temperamental dancers were taking a lot out of her.  She seemed, too, to be beginning to worry that her dancer’s shelf life was close to expiring: that her star was fading, and that the younger up-and-comers would quickly eclipse the appeal of a mother of two in her thirties.

“Aww, Mai can’t make it?” she was saying with a frown.  “What about Serenity?  She’s still coming, right? . . . Of course she can bring her boyfriend if she wants to!  And you’re not allowed to chase him away, Joey, not under _our_ roof! . . . It doesn’t matter who he is, if he’s important to her!  It’s her life, Joey!”

Téa reached out her hand and Yugi helped her up from the bed.  “You want to talk to Amana a minute, Joey?” she asked, squeezing Yugi’s hand in gratitude and leading the two of them out of the bedroom and back to the kitchen, where Amana had abandoned the bowl of sky-blue frosting on the counter next to the used cookie cutters and was engaged in staring into the oven, impatient for the cookies to be done.

“Amana, honey, you want to talk to your godfather?”  Téa asked, and Amana bounded up with enthusiasm to snatch the phone from her mother’s hand to greet him.  Her parents decamped to the living room.

“So Mai’s not coming, huh? That’s a shame,” Yugi commented.

“Mmmm,” Téa grunted, lowering herself wearily down into an armchair.

Yugi frowned deeply. “How are you feeling today?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Téa assured him, with a pitying look at his troubled expression, “Just tired.”

“Would you like some tea?  I’ll put some on,” Yugi offered.

“My husband is the sweetest!” she grinned, pulling him in for a kiss before letting him go off to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

When Yugi returned, weaving past his animated daughter, who was describing to Joey the different shapes and designs of their in-progress Christmas cookies, Téa asked, “What did Kaiba want?”

“Wanted me to do some speech at the Duel Academy,” he replied.  “I said I wouldn’t do it unless he changed the monkey’s name to no longer be an insult to Joey.”  He clenched his fist in mock dramatic gesture.  “I stood firm.”

“Aww,” Téa giggled, “I’m so proud of you, honey.”

“And you know what he said?” Yugi laughed, inching around her armchair to stand at an angle behind her and give her shoulders a massage.  “He said he liked me better when I was a pushover!”

“Of _course_ he did,” said Téa savagely.  “It was easier to get what he wanted from you.  _You_ should’ve reminded him who the pushover was every time you dueled!”

“I’m not _that_ mean, Téa!”

“I know,” laughed Téa softly, closing her eyes with a contented grin and reaching up to squeeze the hand on her shoulder.

Just then, the doorbell rang.  It was evening now, several hours past dark – too late for missionaries or solicitors, and they weren’t expecting any of their friends to arrive for their Christmas party until tomorrow.

“Carolers, you think?” Yugi wondered, his eyes narrowing in confusion.

“Could be a _really_ determined kid selling something,” countered Téa.  “You should let me handle them if that’s the case – you can never say no to those kids.”

“Or maybe Bakura came early?” Yugi frowned.  “He does always get lonely around Christmas.”

He moved curiously over to the window to see if he could see who was at the front door from there.  Poking from around the beam support of his porch, he could just see a couple of spikes of black and red hair.  Just like _his_ hair. Now Yugi had been a top contender in the professional dueling circuit long enough to have seen his trademark hairstyle imitated before, but it still always took him by surprise that young kids looked up to him, thought of _him_ as someone to emulate.  “Must be a fan,” he muttered, and, giving Téa a quick thumbs-up, he took a deep breath and went downstairs to answer the door and greet them.

“Hello, can I help –?” he began cheerfully as he swung the door open, but was cut of suddenly by his own gasp of shock.

“Is something the matter?” asked the boy in the doorway.  That _voice_!  And that _smirk_ he was wearing!  That all-knowing look in those fathomless purple eyes!  Down to the blond streaks in the center of his black and red spikes, the kid, though a little younger, was almost the spitting image of his old body-sharing roommate and greatest friend, Pharaoh Atem, who had passed on to the afterlife some seventeen years ago.

“No,” said Yugi in an oddly strained voice, “no, you just – remind me of someone.”

“Yes,” said the boy, unsmiling, in an utterly serious tone.  “I should think I would.  Yugi,” he said, moving into the doorway, causing Yugi to subconsciously back up a step, “Partner – it’s me! I’ve come back!”

“Yugi can’t – you –” Yugi began hopelessly, backing up to where the stairs began, before his voice died completely. 

“Come now, Yugi, is it really so hard to believe?” he asked, smiling now that gentle, so familiar smile.  “You’ve traveled to the ancient past, clashed with gods and monsters, shared your body, your friends and your memories with a 3,000-year-old ghost – and yet reincarnation is too far?  I remember you readily believed that Kaiba, Ishizu, and your grandfather were reincarnations of my priests.  I, too, am a reincarnation – of your friend, the Pharaoh Atem!”

Yugi opened his eyes, willing himself past every level of protective denial, and saw him standing there.  “In our last duel,” he said softly, “how did I stop your god card to win?”

The boy smiled knowingly, closing his eyes.  “You had placed your Monster Reborn in the Gold Sarcophagus, removing it from play, so when I tried to use it to summon Slifer the Sky Dragon, it negated my Monster Reborn’s effect.  With me unable to bring back my banished god, you were able to attack directly with your Silent Magician and finish me off. It sent the message to my spirit that the souls of the dead must not linger in the world of the living – and that puzzle box which brought us together would also be your instrument to set my spirit free!”

Yugi burst into tears.  He threw himself down to his knees, clutched at the boy's collar, and sobbed into his shirt.  The boy, for whom this had not been entirely unexpected, continued to smile down gently at his quivering frame and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.

“Téa!” Yugi called out in a strangled voice.  “Téa, come quick!”

Téa, who had taken the phone back from her daughter and was talking to Joey, nearly dropped it when she heard his choked cry.  With a quick “gotta go” to Joey, she dropped the phone with a beep, sprang to her feet, bolted to the top of the stairs with far more grace and agility than most six-months pregnant women could boast, and looked down upon an astonishing scene.

The emotions that claim one’s heart as they look down on their beloved, tenderhearted husband of ten years sobbing unrestrainedly into the shirt of a fourteen-year-old reincarnation of their tragically-departed high school crush are a mystery that may never be fully fathomed – least of all, it seemed, to Téa herself, who at first froze in place and could not utter a word.

“Téa, it’s _him_ ,” Yugi sobbed, “it’s _him_!”  And Téa found that she could believe him almost right away, without further proof, and her tears fell almost unconsciously.  There was no mistaking that familiar look in his eye as he finally looked up at her.  It was _him_.

“Hello, Téa,” he smiled warmly.  But then a look of understanding alighted on his face, and his smile only widened. “You married Téa, Yugi?” he exclaimed in delight.  “And – and –?”  He gestured vaguely at Téa’s abdomen.

“Our second,” Yugi grinned through his tears, standing up at last and attempting to brush them aside.  “Uh – come up, Pharaoh, and meet Amana.”

Amana had seen her father cry before, but never for so long.  After shyly shaking hands with the boy from outside who had weirdly similar hair, she sat down in his lap and watched him concernedly.  “Why are you crying, Daddy?” she kept asking.

And he always promptly reply, “I’m just – happy.”

The boy sat in between Yugi and Téa on the couch, both of them clasping one of his hands for dear life, as he tried to explain to them how he’d come to be there.  After a while in the afterlife, he explained, he had been speaking to his father, who was explaining to him that Isis and Seto and Shimon had chosen to be reincarnated when they did in order to guide his soul back home, and that reincarnation by choice was only allowed once.  “And I made up my mind that very _second_ ,” the boy concluded, “that if I had one full life to live on this earth, I choose to live in an age where I could still see _you_ again!”

Yugi looked liable to burst into tears again when the oven beeped and the teapot whistled in unison.  Amana jumped to her feet, eager to finally get to her cookies, and Yugi chased after her, reminding her she needed to use an oven mitt or she’d burn herself.

Téa was still rather dumbstruck, and while they were gone, the boy tried haltingly to ask her about her dancing. Yugi and Amana returned a moment later carrying a tray bearing four cups of tea and several more fresh-from-the-oven hot sky-blue frosted Dark Magician Girl cookies.   

“I bought her the cookie cutter at Kaibaland,” Yugi grinned, bowing as he placed the tray on the coffee table, “but it’s not her number _one_ favorite card!  She takes after her godfather in that.  Tell him who your favorite is, sweetie!”

“The Red-Eyes Black Dragon!” Amana exclaimed with enthusiasm, clenching her hand into a determined fist in a very extremely Joey-ish gesture, and they all laughed heartily.

“A girl of excellent taste,” agreed the Pharaoh’s reincarnation, and _man_ , it was surreal to be sitting here with this fourteen-year-old kid and hearing him use that old, familiar, commanding voice to say a thing like that.  “How is Joey, by the way?”

“He’s done well,” grinned Yugi. “He’s an architect now.  Still _on-and-off_ with Mai; they’re both so stubborn.  He’s actually coming here tomorrow, for Christmas.  If – you could stay awhile – you could see him again!  And I know he’d love to see you, too!”

“We should _not_ call him back to tell him about all this,” said Téa with an evil grin.  “He’ll totally flip when he sees you again!”

“Like we didn’t both flip when we saw him again!” laughed Yugi, who had cleared away most of his tears while in the kitchen, but was still occasionally rubbing his eyes and sniffling.  He then picked up his teacup and held it up as if in a toast, and Amana, followed by Téa and the Pharaoh’s reincarnation, hastened to follow suit.  “To old friends,” he said in a faltering voice, and they all three echoed him, and drank.

Over tea and cookies he explained more to them – how he had been born to a poor Egyptian family, but with all his memories intact almost as soon as he became aware.  This was by design, apparently: he didn’t want to have to go searching for his memories yet again, and whatever the rules of reincarnation were had meekly allowed the Pharaoh to do as he pleased.  Since his family had no money for travel, and were a bit hazy about his ancient knowledge and other lives in the first place, however, he had been unable to come here and join his friends before.  “However,” he told them with a streak of pride that was as much his old self-assuredness as the genuine and youthful cockiness of any fourteen-year-old, “I still had my old skill in dueling, so I was able to win myself a scholarship – an invitation to come out here and try out for the Duel Academy!”

Téa grinned.  “That’s great, Pharaoh!” she said.  “You’ll definitely get in!  And you’ll finally get to live a full a life, like you couldn’t the first time!  And I’ll bet Kaiba will be surprised to see you again!”

“Kaiba,” said the boy, grinning smugly, “Even _him_ I’d like to see again – if only to defeat him in one more duel!”

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you,” mused Yugi, softly and thoughtfully, “a life – for the first time – completely free, completely _you_ , completely your own and alive, no evil forces to vanquish anymore –”

“Yugi, don’t jinx it!” interjected Téa.

“ – so there’s just one thing I’m still wondering about,” Yugi finished.

“What’s that, partner?”

“This time around,” Yugi smiled, “do you have a name you know?”

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up the other day with the idea for this fic practically fully-formed in my head. It just took a few days to drag the words out of me. I promise there's no weird quasi-sacrilegious symbolism in Atem's reincarnation appearing at Christmas; the idea just presented itself in my mind as holiday fluff. I also apologize for the potential ending fatigue? I'm just not good at NOT explaining things, I guess. Title is from a Christmas song from church choir - 'promise' being a nice theme and all, since the kid finally gets to live a full life! :)
> 
> Making sure every Téa has an accented 'é' is surprisingly annoying. Heaven forbid I ever try to write Star Wars fic involving Padmé Amidala.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed! :)


End file.
